“I spend the first morning of my Christmas holidays scraping vomit off my bedroom carpet. I use an egg lifter, which makes it easier to get at the bits of pineapple and mushroom. Mom appears at the door. Every one of her thirty-five years hangs in the saggy bags under her bloodshot eyes. ‘Aw, dolling. What can I say? There was something wrong with the pizza.’” Beat is used to her mother hitting the bottle and then hitting rehab. She knows the score. But this Christmas break her mom is going to rehab and she is being forced to go away with her Grummer, who she doesn’t even know. She…

“Miss Stunkel’s art class is my All-Time Favourite. Don’t get me wrong, the rest of the school is all right, I guess. But for me, drawing is like wiggling my toes in the ocean. It just feels good. I take out my No. 2 Hard drawing pencil from my red metal toolbox and carefully study my best friend Patsy’s face.” Penelope Crumb is just a normal girl. However before you read her story you should know that her brother is an alien, her mum draws creepy inside body parts and she has her grandfathers huge nose. This isn’t apparent to Penelope until her best friend Patsy Cline draws the huge…